A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) | Kaye Gibbons

A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) | Kaye Gibbons | Worth reading - a treatise on love

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A Virtuous Woman (...

	A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) Kaye Gibbons Vintage, 1997 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 108 reviews view larger image
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When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life.

Kaye Gibbons's first novel, Ellen Foster, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the praise of writers from Walker Percy to Eudora Welty. In A Virtuous Woman, Gibbons transcends her early promise, creating a multilayered and indelibly convincing portrait of two seemingly ill-matched people who somehow miraculously make a marriage.

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Wonderful

This was a quick and fabulous read! I felt as if I knew each of the characters.

Worth reading - a treatise on love

The writing in this book is so good that I've read it twice. (Something I NEVER do. Nev. Er.) A Virtuous Woman tells the story of a married couple, Ruby and Jack, who meet each other, fall in love, and marry. Ruby later contracts lung cancer. Facing her death, she ruminates on her adventures and tries her best to prepare Jack to live without her. Jack savors the memories of the two of them, even as he knows he must move beyond them to continue his life. Chapters of the novel are alternately narrated by each of the two primary characters, a style which is effective because it lets us see the inner thoughts of both.

I enjoyed how this novel dealt with the definition of love. It is a subject worth considering, and one that can easily become maudlin. However, Gibbons' characters look at it with a steady, nearly objective eye. The characters know who they are and what they need from a mate. And when they find one another, there is a quiet cherishing that they do of one another. The love Gibbons writes of is a wise love, not young and foolish, not headstrong and impassioned, but matter-of-fact and solid as bedrock. I can appreciate such a story.

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Just kind of ok...

The story was fine and it was a quick read with some interesting moments but overall I would not recommend this book unless you just need something to read on a quick flight. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I believe if you go into this book thinking it's some amazing novel you will be disappointed. But if you are looking for something light to read without becoming engrossed you will be fine. I certainly wouldn't call this a page turner and have a whole list of books I would recommend before this one.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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